Monthly Non-Fiction Reading List 9.24
We’re back with our first monthly reading list! We have some great books, and one is a contender for best book of the year. There are a couple of mental health books, a book about the art of being interested, and one for social media creators. Lastly, we have the first book in a while that I gave up on and still reviewed because it’s bad and dangerous.
Now, for some quick housecleaning.
This is the first monthly reading list since switching from weekly, and as you can see, it’s October 4th. I’m not sure when I’ll post the monthly reading list, so I don’t want to commit to a date. This first month, I kind of just wanted to break the multi-year habit of having a strict schedule, because that’s one of the reasons I wanted to switch from weekly.
I’m going to shoot for getting these out within the first week of the month, but we’ll see. Either way, if you’re following me here on Substack, you’ll get an email. Thanks, and enjoy the reading list!
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Helping Your Anxious Teen: Positive Parenting Strategies to Help Your Teen Beat Anxiety, Stress, and Worry by Sheila Achar Josephs PhD
My son just entered his sophomore year of high school, and while he’s always been a great student, he’s finally reached a point where the workload is overwhelming him. I’m a big mental health guy, but it’s been a while since I’ve read a book about improving mental health for young people, so I bought some books and this is the first one I read, and it’s fantastic.
I’m not 100% sure if my son’s problem is anxiety, but I thought this would be a good starting point. This book has an insane amount of practical advice from a woman that’s been helping teens for years. Each chapter is short and discusses different reasons teens get anxious. There were some chapters that weren’t really applicable, but I can honestly say the advice from this book has been super helpful regardless of whether or not my teen is struggling with that specific issue.
I saw some negative reviews of this book that said, “I already knew all of this” and rated it low. Well, I knew all of this as well, but it was a good refresher and reminded me of some tools I could use with my teen that I’d forgot about, and they’ve definitely helped. I just wanted to point that out because that’s a strange way to rate a book. In my opinion, you need to ask who the target audience is and ask if it’d be useful to them. This one definitely is and it was even helpful for someone like me who has read hundreds of mental health books.
Day Trading Attention: How to Actually Build Brand and Sales in the New Social Media World by Gary Vaynerchuk
This is is the latest from Gary Vee, and I enjoyed it a lot more than his last book, but I also wasn’t the target audience for his last book. I’m getting back in the groove of content creation, and this was definitely the book I needed to read right now. My only issue with this book is definitely a personal one, and that’s the fact that it talks quite a bit about spending money on targeted ads. There’s plenty of free advice in here for organic reach, but the parts about spending ad money, I kind of zoned out because it’s more for small businesses.
Overall, it’s a great book. While everything didn’t pertain ot me, I respect that it covers all angles from individual creators and small businesses to advice for large corporations.
The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It by Lorraine Besser PhD
This book immediately became a contender for one of my favorite books of the year. Lorraine Besser researches what she calls psychological richness, and it’s a blend of philosophy and psychology. The book is all about fostering curiosity as we try to live a good life, and it’s fantastic. There was another book about curiosity that I reviewed earlier this year that I can’t remember the name of because it was that forgettable. This book was exactly what I’d hoped the other book was, and I loved it.
This is a must-read book. It helps us take a new perspective on “bad” situations in our life through the beauty of curiosity. When we try to find things interesting, we switch from a judgment mindset to one that simply experiences life. I can’t recommend this book enough, and I hope more people read it.
Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Julie Smith
I’d never heard of Julie Smith before, but she’s a psychologist who blew up as a mental health influencer. I’ve read some other books by mental health influencers, and I can honestly say that this is the best one. It covers a wide range of topics and actually gives good advice rooted in research and actual therapeutic methods. Books from other mental health influencers have always felt like a cash grab, but this one wasn’t just a good book from a mental health influencer book, it was a great book by a psychologist.
Books I gave up on:
Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails by Sharyl Attkisson
It’s been a long time since I reviewed a book that I gave up on. I always figure that I just won’t waste my time. It’s also extremely rare that I stop reading a book by someone I disagree with. I typically finish it just so I can better understand the viewpoint so I can engage in better discussions with the opposition or just “know the enemy” better. But I had to stop this book because it was not only ridiculous, but it was dangerous in a way that I’m not a fan of. Worst of all, this book baits you in by making you think it’s going to be a sane, rational book.
A book like this is tricky to gauge by the title and description. As a recovering pill addict, I’m extremely skeptical of doctors and Big Pharma, but I also understand that not all doctors and not all medications are bad. When grabbing a book like this, you don’t know if the reader is going to give you a realistic view of the topic and explain how people like the Sackler family are monsters or if it’s going to get into some insane anti-vax stuff.
I’d never heard of the author, so I wasn’t sure which way it’d go. After looking at her previous books, she seemed like she panders to the right a bit, but I still decided to give the book a try. I was concerned about it being an anti-vax book, but I was pleasantly surprised…at first.
The book starts rational enough. It made some really good points about Big Pharma, doctors, how medications are researched and all that. It was really good information, so I figured maybe I was wrong about her. There was somewhat of a green flag when she discussed the Tuskegee experiments, but unsurprisingly, she used this simply as a way to start spouting insanity.
At one point early in the book, the first red flag popped up when she dove into some anti-trans rhetoric. She legitimately talked about how much money, power, and influence LGBTQ organizations have over the government, and I audibly laughed out loud. She made it sound like The Trevor Project has more influence over Washington than companies like Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson.
Then, she goes full anti-vax. Not just COVID anti-vax, either. She dives head first into “vaccines cause autism” terrotory, which has been debunked for years. What really set me off about this book was when she played the victim. She says something along the lines of, “When I write about worker’s rights, I’m pro-worker. But when I write about the dangers of vaccines causing autism, I’m labeled as anti-vax”, and that was a big fat YIKES for me.
After the brief glimpse of sanity early on in the book, it starts getting into chapter after chapter of anti-vax nonsense. It’s a long book, too. Not only did I stop reading it because it was long and I knew it’d be torture, but books like this are extremely dangerous. Psychologically, people assume a long book discussing “the dangers of vaccines” makes it more credible, but in reality, it just gives you more BS to fact check.
This is going to be a book people point to as “evidence” about the dangers of vaccines and God knows what else, so I figured I’d do my due diligence to let you know how awful it was.
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